


Dear Toby

by apocryphile



Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocryphile/pseuds/apocryphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh calls Toby for advice after his first kiss with Donna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Toby

**Author's Note:**

> There's a whole series brewing of Toby offering sage love and life advice on the phone in the aftermath of his estrangement (the next instalment, some time in the future, is [On The Side Of The Fathers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/326678)). I fervently believe his honesty has always defined him, but I never love him more than in the rare moments that he tackles personal and emotional issues.

Josh would have sworn at that moment that Toby was letting the phone ring on just to further fray the very ragged edges of his nerves--

“This is Bob.”

He didn’t pause to inhale, and his words came out strangled.

“Toby, I kissed Donna.”

There was a long silence.

“Well, okay then.”

“Okay then? This is a big deal, Toby, a really big deal, and you give me ‘Well, Okay then”!”

“Is it a really big deal, Josh? Because it’s hard to tell with you two sometimes.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“She brings you coffee and the world is ending. She moves in with you for three months after you almost die – and keeps everyone else, including the President of the United States, away from you – and don’t think for a moment we didn’t know you shared a bed with her – and it’s back to business as usual, except that you were really mean to her for a while and then almost fell apart again once you’d pushed her away. And then she quits so you quit and now she’s working for you again after you refused to hire her and you’re calling me the morning that your guy draws level with the other guy and what you’re telling me is that you kissed Donna?”

“Uh, Toby?”

“Sorry. OK. So it’s a really big deal.”

“It really is.”

“Is it a big deal because it was a mistake, or is it a big deal because you want to do it again, perhaps every day for the rest of your life?”

“You really have to ask me that?”

Another long pause, but Josh suspected Toby was smiling.

“If you screw this up, Joshua, I am setting CJ on you SO FAST…”

Toby had, it seemed, momentarily forgotten that CJ was no longer available to him to set on anyone, much less their erstwhile colleague, but Josh opted to let it go for the time being.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Ziegler.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t jinx my thing with Donna!”

“Jinx? Your THING?”

Josh sighed.

“Toby, you know I suck at this.”

“Actually, I don’t know that. You suck at dating. Loving Donna, I’d say that on balance, you just about scrape through with being OK at. With the odd noteworthy misstep.”

“And the occasional awesome grand gesture. C’mon.”

“Yeah. Throwing snowballs at her window.”

“You helped!”

Toby chuckled.

“That I did. It’s time for the grownup stuff now, though.”

“The grownup stuff?”

“The scary stuff you’ve devoted all your previous relationships, if we can call them that, to frantically avoiding.”

“Toby, I kissed her once. Well, a few times. But on one, you know, occasion.”

“Josh, this isn’t some cute girl who caught your eye in line at the coffee shop and slipped you her number on a napkin. You and Donna have been… you and Donna for what, eight years?”

“Nine.”

Toby exhaled loudly.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Exactly.”

“So what do I do now?”

Toby thought for a moment.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to go and find her right now and lock yourselves in the nearest room with a bed for the foreseeable future?”

“One to ten? About fifty thousand.”

“I thought so. You should definitely do that.”

“WHAT?”

“OK, good. I’m glad you see how that would be a bad idea.”

“Toby!”

“Josh, listen to me carefully, because I know something you don’t know.”

They both breathed into the phone as different, vivid memories unfolded in their minds.

“You know a lot of things I don’t know, Toby.”

“One of these days I’m going to ask for that in writing, you know. What we both know, Josh, is that going through life not getting to tell the person you love that you love them, every day, isn’t really living.”

CJ’s face flashed in his mind before Andy’s did, and Josh wasn’t entirely sure, in that moment, who the person Toby loved was, but he reasoned that the argument flew either way. His voice was barely a breath when he answered.

“Yeah.”

“But what I know, is that getting to say that, Josh, it doesn’t just make life bearable. It makes it miraculous. It’s not just scratching an itch… it’s, well, let’s not belabor that image.”

They chuckled softly. Josh could picture him, pausing mid-gesture when he realized where his analogy had started to head before he caught up with it, hand suspended in midair.

“That’s pretty much what I’m hoping for.”

“I know. And that’s why, against my better judgment, I’m trusting you to actually hear me right now.”

“I’m trying, Toby. I really am. I know that this is worth the effort. It’s just right now…”

“You don’t even have time to be having this conversation. I get that. It’s good that you are. But that was actually going to be my point.”

“Uh… what was?”

“Wait.”

“Wait?”

“Wait. It’s been eight…. nine years, Josh. This is worth doing right. Wait.”

“Wait until what?”

“Until you have time.”

“Time for what?”

“To do right by her.”

“But how do I do that?”

Toby sighed in exasperation.

“Josh, I would hope that at this point you know her better than I do.”

“That’s the thing.”

“Look, I know you think she’s changed. She’s grown up a lot. She’s toughened up, and now she actually knows she’s really smart, and she’s starting to trust that people respect her.”

“How do you KNOW this stuff?”

“I’m mostly quoting CJ.”

“Ah. That makes sense.”

“But you see that too, right?”

“Yeah. She’s pretty amazing.”

“She was always pretty amazing, Josh. You saw that before anyone else did.”

Josh paused for a second as something clicked into place in his brain.

“Toby, did you somehow get Lou Thornton to hire her after I specifically said I couldn’t?”

“No one gets Lou Thornton to do anything, you know that.”

“But you suggested it.”

“I may have indicated that it presented an opportunity both to genuinely enhance the team and, uh, screw with you a little.”

“Toby!”

“You don’t get to be pissed at me about it, Josh. Not now that you appear to have finally stepped up to the plate.”

“But you’re telling me to head back to the dugout.”

“Temporarily. And I’m not in any way suggesting you should avoid or ignore her, I want to make that really clear, because I know what you’re like.”

“I don’t think I could physically manage to stay away.”

“The rare moment of clarity.”

“Why am I still talking to you, again?”

“Because you usually talk to Donna about this stuff, which is really stupid, by the way, but you can’t this time.”

Josh inhaled.

“Right.”

“So Santos and Vinick are neck and neck, huh?”

There was a long pause.

“Josh?”

“Yes. Yes, yes. They are.”

“….and?”

“Right. Sorry. Yes. The numbers look really good, Toby, I don’t think it’s a fluke bump, I really think we’re consolidating our lead. I’ve got Joey’s people working on a more detailed survey so we can get a better idea of where we’re drawing the new support from, but it’s not just undecideds, Toby, some people are actually hopping the fence…”

Smiling alone in the quiet of his dusty apartment, Toby held the handset away from his face as Josh warbled on, and scrolled through the New York Times figures he’d been pondering all morning, waiting for his phone to ring.


End file.
